


Unfrozen

by doublejoint



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22313572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: How can people move on with their lives as if nothing had happened, as if they had not borne witness to the same events, as if nothing had changed?
Relationships: Lio Fotia & Gueira & Meis
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Unfrozen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ewagan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewagan/gifts).



> you prompted "what do we do now/where do we go from here" and that's always an excellent postcanon question, particularly for promare and the (now former) burnish. so i just kinda ran with it lol
> 
> thank you for prompting and i hope you enjoy!

What was once a frozen lake is now a crater, the underground laboratory within closed off and boarded up. It had been so easy to crash without thinking, but now even on a bike the slope is difficult and there’s nothing waiting at the bottom. A moment, an instinct, a feeling--the idea of doing anything like that, of burning like a comet, of flying through the air, of unleashing a power that was not his to unleash--the Lio whose feet are permanently glued to the ground can only access it behind the wall and lock of memory. 

How can people move on with their lives as if nothing had happened, as if they had not borne witness to the same events, as if nothing had changed? How can they walk past the gaping holes and craters as if they’d been there the whole time like deep pockmarks on the perfect facade of Promepolis? 

It’s easier to pretend things are the same, maybe. It’s easier to believe your own lies when you don’t look at the reflection of your face, when you have the same job and the same mortgage on the same apartment and your children attend the same children, with maybe a few new children who come from a different world. Unless you were Burnish, or you’d fought the Burnish every day, your life distills to the same sentences on the page. Enough people are far enough removed that all of this could happen in the first place (after all, Kray had taken advantage of it, exploited fear and separation). Enough people can be granted their wish to forget.

Other people could, can, have, forgiven that. Lio won’t allow himself to. Perhaps that damns his soul, makes him somehow lesser, a difficult person. He will never forget the nights spent in caves, the screaming of that engine, the sensation of his own body falling apart. So many died for nothing, or worse, for less than that, for the poison pushing society to the tipping point, and sometimes Lio thinks they shouldn’t have saved it. That just going back to this, fighting every day just not to lose ground, isn’t different enough from where they were before. They have nominal power, but they can’t use it half as well as they’d wielded their flames--at least then people listened a little, out of fear. 

A motorcycle’s engine revs in the distance, and another. They’re crashing along the path in a controlled recklessness; it’s Gueira and Meis, then. They’ve decided that the former lake is a good place to practice motorcycle stunts, more to burn off loose energy and frustration than anything else. 

The sound of the bikes grows louder, and then they cut the engines.

“Hey, Boss,” says Meis.

Lio turns around then; Gueira is trying to rid himself of his helmet hair while Meis bends to check his tires.

“Does this help?” says Lio.

“Hmm?” says Gueira, pushing a hand through his hair again. “With the hair? Kinda.”

“No. The motorcycles. Does it make you feel better?”

“Kinda. Why, you want to try?”

Lio shrugs. If it lets him escape for a little, well--all of this will still be here when he gets off, and it won’t have gotten better. He’ll still be able to do it now though, no obligation to stay hidden or keep an eye out before the long arm of the law snakes around his waist and traps him for existing. 

“Sometimes I don’t think this is much better,” says Meis. 

There is no one here to chastise them for it, to tell them to shut up and be grateful. It shouldn’t be them who has to keep up the fight; haven’t they done their part? Where do they go, how do they keep going, when the end of the horizon looks too close to the past?

“Me neither,” says Lio.

“Just go ahead,” says Gueira, holding out his helmet.

The bike isn’t Lio’s style, too bulky, tires too heavy, but it’ll do. The tires hug the slope of the lake bed, kicking up dust and dirt as it goes, the air trying to shove him back but yielding to the mass and momentum. Lio kicks up the acceleration as he begins to climb again; the slope grows steeper and he leans forward. The top is close, closer, and then he’s clearing it, the glare of the sun in his eyes through the helmet’s visor, no ground under the wheels, just the forces of the air and the sound of the engine in his ears. He is not pressed for time; there is no immediacy, no need, no constraint to work around. Spinning the bike is showing no one up. He could learn all sorts of tricks now if he wanted to.

Of course this is better. And of course it’s not good enough.

He falls, legs squeezing the bike, ready to pull up on the brakes as he hits the ground. But he’ll just keep coming, up and over the lip of the lake bed, as long as he can.

* * *

There’s enough fuel left to get back, though there aren’t any fuel stations convenient enough to stop. Gueira’s not too mad about that, or that he didn’t get to ride.

“It was nice to watch you, Boss. You should think about getting one.”

He should; it’s another one of those things he hasn’t let himself do because of the excuses he makes to himself, but since when has he been the kind of person who makes excuses?

“Maybe.”

“Did it help?” says Meis, as Lio climbs behind him on his motorcycle.

“Yeah,” says Lio. “Thank you, Gueira.”

“Anytime, Boss.”

The way forward is still unclear, but it seems more likely that they’ll find it, or at the very least melt through the ice that keeps it hidden from them at their present vantage point. Or perhaps it’s easier to let the softness of optimism take over when he’s feeling drained, but either way they’ll keep going, keep fighting to make things improve. 


End file.
